Joachim Koester: Hypnagogia
Joachim Koester
Past Exhibition
Mar 25 – May 23 2010
Joachim Koester, To navigate, in a genuine way, in the unknown necessitates an attitude of daring, but not one of recklessness (movements generated from the Magical Passes of Carlos Castaneda), 2009. 16mm film, 3:14 min. Courtesy the artist, Jan Mot (Brussels), Galleri Nicolai Wallner (Copenhagen), and Greene Naftali (New York).
- CULTURAL AGENCY SUPPORTER
Danish Arts Council
- CURATOR
Helena Reckitt
Thanks to the Art Gallery of York University for technical support
Dancers wearing everyday clothes convulse and gyrate, enacting symptoms of a spider’s bite in a riff on the Southern Italian dance called the tarantella; a man mimes actions that channel shamanic gestures; abstract squiggles evoke the experience of writing after consuming mescaline. Hypnagogia, the threshold between consciousness and sleep, is explored in the three films that comprise Joachim Koester’s first solo show in Canada: Tarantism (2007), My Frontier is an Endless Wall of Points (after the mescaline drawings of Henri Michaux) (2007) and To navigate, in a genuine way, in the unknown necessitates an attitude of daring, but not one of recklessness (movements generated from the Magical Passes of Carlos Castaneda) (2009). Projected onto floating screens, these black-and-white 16-mm film loops suggest conscious and unconscious states and gestures, irrationality, loss of control, possession, and the "fringes of the body" that Koester terms "the grey zone."
Joachim Koester, My Frontier Is an Endless Wall of Points (after the mescaline drawings of Henri Michaux), 2007. 16mm film, 10:24 min. Courtesy the artist, Jan Mot (Brussels), Galleri Nicolai Wallner (Copenhagen), and Greene Naftali (New York). Photo: Steve Payne.
Joachim Koester, Tarantism, 2007. 16mm film, 6:30 min. Courtesy the artist, Jan Mot (Brussels), Galleri Nicolai Wallner (Copenhagen), and Greene Naftali (New York).
Joachim Koester, To navigate, in a genuine way, in the unknown necessitates an attitude of daring, but not one of recklessness (movements generated from the Magical Passes of Carlos Castaneda), 2009. 16mm film, 3:14 min. Courtesy the artist, Jan Mot (Brussels), Galleri Nicolai Wallner (Copenhagen), and Greene Naftali (New York). Photo: Steve Payne.
Joachim Koester: Hypnagogia. Photo: Steve Payne.
Joachim Koester, Tarantism, 2007. 16mm film, 6:30 min. Courtesy the artist, Jan Mot (Brussels), Galleri Nicolai Wallner (Copenhagen), and Greene Naftali (New York). Photo: Steve Payne.
Joachim Koester, To navigate, in a genuine way, in the unknown necessitates an attitude of daring, but not one of recklessness (movements generated from the Magical Passes of Carlos Castaneda), 2009. 16mm film, 3:14 min. Courtesy the artist, Jan Mot (Brussels), Galleri Nicolai Wallner (Copenhagen), and Greene Naftali (New York).
SPRING 2010 PROGRAM GUIDE
About the Artist
Joachim Koester
Joachim Koester was born in Copenhagen in 1962 and is currently based in Copenhagen and Brooklyn.